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Monday, August 15, 2011

Keep this up and I may become a fan of the Roanoke Times editorial page. Though I have to believe that an alien has taken control, devoured the scribes there - best known for their zany and detached liberalism - and has written something that actually makes good sense.

A little-known Virginia law that passed in 1984 costs counties a few thousand dollars every year. Among unfunded mandates, the requirement that localities compensate people whose livestock or poultry are killed by dogs is not the most burdensome. But the rule is an unwarranted taxpayer handout.

When most people suffer property damage, they deal with the loss. If they were smart, they took out insurance and filed a claim. If not, well, they are out of luck.

People who keep livestock or poultry have a better option, one that does not require paying insurance premiums. If they can provide evidence that a dog or dog hybrid killed their animals and there is no owner to sue, then localities must compensate them. The law stipulates up to $400 per animal and up to $10 per fowl.

Montgomery County Supervisor Jim Politis likens the compensation to how shopkeepers receive law enforcement protection if someone robs them. The analogy is wrong. Law enforcement officers do not show up and hand public dollars to a shop owner who has been robbed. They investigate the incident and turn the alleged culprit over to prosecutors. [link]

It's unclear whether the newly-converted conservative author of this excellent piece is upset over taxpayer funding or because this is one of those infamous "unfunded mandates" that conservatives love to hate.

In either case, we conservatives welcome the Roanoke Times editorial page to our side and congratulate it for having fought off the demons that have possessed its membership lo these many years.

Now, if they want to take this to its logical next level, and they want to denounce ObamaCare for mandating that all Americans buy health insurance or risk punishment, we'd be even more tickled.

Virginia's bars and restaurants did not turn into shooting galleries as some had feared during the first year of a new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found.

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper's request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law's first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found.

A total of 145 reported crimes with guns occurred in Virginia bars and restaurants in fiscal 2010-11, or eight fewer than the 153 incidents in fiscal 2009-10.

Only two fatal shootings occurred during the last fiscal year — one outside a Petersburg nightclub and the other at a Radford restaurant — but neither involved concealed-gun permit holders. [link] [emphasis mine]

Boy, Dan Casey must be pissed. Not one person was killed by a concealed carry permit holder all year?

Said the frightened Times columnist a year ago:

So next year, with burning cigarettes banned from most restaurants, perhaps the most likely kind of bar smoke we'll see is smoldering wisps that emerge from hot pistol barrels after some permit-holding, gun-hiding patrons get into a face-off.

That is insanity, Virginia.

Remember this weblog post next time he starts whimpering about the world coming to an end because everyone but him and his liberal buddies in Roanoke own firearms. It's all in his delusional mind.

By the way, isn't delusion - an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary - a key facet of ... insanity?

Are we still at war with Libya? Did we declare victory - or defeat - when no one was paying attention and walk away from the fight? Was Obama's "humanitarian mission" too much of an interference with his golf game?

Can you name another instance in American history in which this country went to war and then our leaders decided - simply - to no longer be at war?

If the situation described in "The Barbarians Inside Britain's Gates" are even half true about British youth, we don't want their kind in our country, destroying our way of life the way they seem to be doing their own.

The ex-CNN executive would be right about conservative media dominance, of course, if one were to ignore NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, most every newspaper in the country, and even more than a few radio talk shows here and there.

So this ex-exec (I think it's fair to call him that since he's moving to Current TV, a channel that virtually no one watches, thus making his move one of retirement from active duty) has "outed" himself. He's a liberal. Like all the rest of them.